This gripping crime thriller is more a
‘whichdunnit’ than a ’whodunnit’. The murder victim, a dissident Mormon
patriarch, lived with his three wives in a rundown farmstead in Utah so remote
that the women are the only plausible suspects.
They dislike and resent each
other, and each has a strong motive to kill their tyrannical spouse. Quinn
brilliantly brings her characters to life, each with a very different
backstory, and captures marvelously the feel of the place and the period. I
found the book impossible to put down.
It’s full of twists and turns, with
surprises to the very end. And unlike many thrillers, it has stayed fresh in my
mind for months.
"While Quinn writes with spirit on weighty subjects like domestic abuse, polygamy and religious cults, her primary and most poignant theme seems to be female friendship."-New York Times Book Review
"An absolutely thrilling novel. I devoured it over a weekend, unable to put it down. It's a clever and completely original take on a domestic thriller."-Alex Michaelides, author of the #1 New York Times bestseller The Silent Patient
"Original, informative, suspenseful-the big three in a literary slam bang."-New York Journal of Books
Blake's dead. They say his wife killed him. If so... which one?
I love Chevaiier’s books. She has exceptional
skill in recreating the past, from early medieval France to nineteenth-century
America.
This novel explores the world of a small English cathedral city in the
1930s, through the life of Violet, a youngish woman rendered ‘surplus’ because
her fiancé and so many other men of her generation had perished in the First
World War. There are no fireworks in this story, but I found it moving in
depicting the hopes, fears, prejudices, and struggles of its varied characters,
with the shadows of another World War already looming on the horizon.
FROM THE GLOBALLY BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF GIRL WITH A PEARL EARRING
'Bittersweet ... dazzling' Guardian
'Deeply pleasurable ... the ending made me cry' The Times
'Told with a wealth of detail and narrative intensity' Penelope Lively
Violet is 38.
The First World War took everything from her. Her brother, her fiance - and her future. She is now considered a 'surplus woman'.
But Violet is also fiercely independent and determined. Escaping her suffocating mother, she moves to Winchester to start a new life -a change that will require courage, resilience and acts of quiet rebellion. And when whispers of another…
Britain’s experiment with republicanism lasted
only eleven years (1649-60). Keay explores it through the eyes of a dozen very
different characters, from Oliver Cromwell to a cynical journalist, a countess,
a country squire, a low-born visionary, and so on.
In each case she gives us a
sympathetic insight into the person’s mindset and life, set against the backcloth
of public events across England, Scotland, and Ireland. I have been studying this period for decades
and would recommend this book as the ideal introduction for anyone new to it.
And there are lots of pictures to add to the page-turning narratives.
THE SUNDAY TIMES HISTORY BOOK OF THE YEAR 2022
WINNER OF THE POL ROGER DUFF COOPER PRIZE FOR NON-FICTION
SHORTLISTED FOR THE BAILLIE GIFFORD PRIZE
Eleven years when Britain had no king.
In 1649 Britain was engulfed by revolution.
On a raw January afternoon, the Stuart king, Charles I, was executed for treason. Within weeks the English monarchy had been abolished and the 'useless and dangerous' House of Lords discarded. The people, it was announced, were now the sovereign force in the land. What this meant, and where it would lead, no one knew.
Many people today don’t know that huge numbers
of Europeans were also enslaved in the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries. Among
them were roughly 20,000 Britons and a small number of Americans, seized by
Barbary corsairs and sold into slavery in Algiers, Tunis, and Morocco. This
book explores their stories, for the first time: capture, often at sea,
humiliating sale in the slave market, and then life and often death in bondage.
The more fortunate were eventually ransomed, while a brave handful contrived to
escape and make it back home. Several later described their adventures in
print, and the book makes full use of their extraordinary stories.
